Israeli Press
Israel's Thursday papers read Europe's E1 anger and a united Arab slate
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Two stories with Palestinian weight ran through the Israeli press on Thursday: Europe's reaction to the E1 settlement tender, and the return of a joint Arab slate to the ballot. Around them, the campaign filled the rest of the page.
Ynet led its diplomatic file with the tender's fallout — London's summons of Israel's chargé d'affaires, the British foreign secretary's demand for an immediate reversal, and a survey of how Germany, France, Britain and Italy are weighing sanctions while fearing the timing helps Netanyahu. The site quoted the mayor of Ma'ale Adumim dismissing the objections and telling Britain and the UN to pay less attention to what he called fake.
Maariv and Haaretz both reported the agreement between Hadash, Ta'al and Balad to run on one list, with Yousef Jabareen at its head, Ahmad Tibi second and Sami Abu Shehadeh third, and Ra'am running separately. Maariv put the two lists together at about twelve seats.
A security doctrine aimed partly at citizens#
Maariv published Naftali Bennett's security programme for a government he would head: declaring Qatar an enemy state, making Iran pay for every Hezbollah launch, replacing Turkey and Qatar with Egypt in Gaza — and deploying the army against illegal weapons inside Arab communities in Israel.
The last item is the one Palestinian citizens of Israel will read twice. Policing in their towns has been the subject of a decade of unmet promises; a soldier is not a police officer, and the difference is the whole argument.
The campaign's own wreckage#
Maariv reported Likud's first public admission that the conscription law cost it seats — Moshe Saada put the loss at six to eight — and described pressure on Netanyahu to use his reserved slots to stop the drift toward Ofer Winter's expected new party, whose purple billboards went up across the country this week.
The paper also reported that Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar has petitioned the Central Elections Committee to strip dozens of posts from Netanyahu's account for using soldiers and operational footage, days after Likud won a partial ruling from Justice Noam Sohlberg ordering Bennett to cut soldiers and weapons from a campaign video and pay 2,000 shekels in costs.
Ynet reported Likud anger at Itamar Ben Gvir, who is accused inside the ruling party of growing at its expense, while figures around the minister say Netanyahu is making Eisenkot acceptable to the right.
Iran, Syria and a checkpoint near Ariel#
Walla and Maariv carried Defence Minister Israel Katz's warning to Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to test Israel's resolve after the strikes on a Syrian airbase, and Iran's mockery of President Trump's declaration of an economic "D-Day" against it.
Walla also reported that police fired on a vehicle that broke through a checkpoint near Ariel in the occupied West Bank, in what initial accounts described as a pursuit of a stolen car — the kind of item that appears in Israeli media as traffic and in Palestinian towns as a question about who was in the car.
